On the verge

Who: Liam Lynch What: Entertainer They say: 'Let's do lunch' Ringo Starr We say: One-man creativity machine whose lo-fi talents are coming to a cinema - or a radio, or a television - near you soon

It takes a certain kind of confidence to release a single whose entire appeal rests on one vacuous adolescent retort. Liam Lynch's 'United States of Whatever' was the stealth hit of last year, its compulsive three-chord guitar riff propelling Lynch through a Valley Boy rap, telling hilarious tales of irritation and disaffection, all of which end in a sneering 'Whatever!' It became the novelty single it was cool to like, a fitting tribute for Lynch, himself something of a cool novelty.

The Renaissance man is something of a dying breed, but when Lynch says, 'I'm as much visual as I am... audible', you know he intends to revive it. He's best known as the man behind MTV's Sifl & Olly show, but he hatched the project while studying music at Paul McCartney's Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, working with super producer John Parish, among others. The show picked up influential fans, among them actor Jack Black, one half of rock band Tenacious D, and Lynch's career exploded. 'I wrote lyrics for a song Jack sang on Dave Grohl's solo project, and Dave played drums on Tenacious D's album, and I did their video, and then Dave asked me to shoot his video,' he says. He makes it all sound so simple. Video commissions for a number of artists, including No Doubt, followed, and he writes songs for cult American animation show Clone High.

It wasn't always like this for the boy who was in a special class at school 'with kids that had to wear helmets', but now he's taking work-with-me calls from Ringo Starr and is about to direct the Tenacious D movie. It would be easy to hate someone who now seems so effortlessly high-achieving, but with his high-pitched voice and habit of dissolving into fits of giggling, most often at himself, it's impossible to be anything other than impressed. An unnamed British record company approached him to write a song that 'sums up the British youth the way "United States of Whatever" does for the Americans'. 'I couldn't believe it. What would that be?' he asks. He adopts a comedy English accent and tries to imagine how it would sound: 'I walked into this pub, and this bird comes up and I'm like: "Yeah, blimey!"' He sounds weary of it all, but you know he's enjoying watching the rest of the world trying to keep up.

· Liam Lynch's CD and DVD Fake Songs is released in April.

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